Just_Joey

Hahaha, as a member of the tribe I often wonder the same thing!

Hey Jerry!

Do you know about the Seinfeld : The Purge show happening at the UCB Theatre in Los Angeles?

It's an episode of Seinfeld that takes place during the movie the Purge.

http://losangeles.ucbtheatre.com/shows/view/3962

Sure! There are 562 federally recognized tribes that are all pretty different. I can only really speak on the (mostly Washington State) reservations I've been to, but here's what I can tell you about those.

- It's okay for non natives to live on reservations. I lived in a lower middle class suburb where a lot of my neighbors weren't native.

- There are rich tribes and poor tribes. I grew up on the Tulalip reservation which has a casino, resort and a bunch of other sources of income. They're doing pretty well, so they have tribal schools, tribal police, hatcheries for salmon, a museum, native health clinics and etc. I've also been to reservations that don't have paved roads and barely have internet access because the US Government gave them a bad plot of land for their reservation and they're struggling financially. It's all over the place. There isn't one reservation experience. It's all different.

- If you're interested in authentic native art, reservations are a good place to pick that stuff up.

- A lot of reservations have food trucks or stalls that sell fry bread, which is very delicious.

- Speaking specifically of my experiences, a lot of my schooling on the reservation was spent talking about Salish native history, going on field trips to the tribe's long house, or the remains of boarding schools, watching hoop dances for assemblies, learning traditional stories and performing them for my class. Some people only learn about natives for one week in November. In some states, all of native history is condensed to one paragraph in a u.s. history book that's covered for five minutes in one class in the 4th grade. Growing up on a reservation made me appreciate how "surrounded" by native history we all are and how lucky I am to have been taught what I've been taught and how so few people are taught this stuff.

Personally, I think it's an 8 in terms of importance (Not that it's not important. It's just, with the amount of Indigenous women that go missing and are murdered every year and with the forced sterilization of first nations women that is happening in Canada right now, there are a lot of big problems hitting natives but that's a long and depressing aside).

I want teams like the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves and the Washington R-Words to change their name because a team being named after a broad racial group is weird (and the Washington team's case, it's just straight up racist). It's the same thing as calling them "The Cleveland White People". That's not something most people would be proud of. It would just be unusual.

Really, I want this team to follow the Florida State Seminoles model. They're named after an actual tribe and not just a broad racial group. Their mascot and logo specifically honor the regalia and colors of the Seminole tribe's flag. The Seminole tribe (I think) gets a cut of the merch money for that, which helps their people. If all of these teams with generic native names changed their names to actually honor the tribes who's land they're on, that would actually honor people and the money the tribe would earn form that would actually help natives.

Yeah! It sells out pretty much every show. It's actually super accurate to the world of Seinfeld and also the world of The Purge and everyone is great in it. You should check it out!